Grandma's House

My memories of visits when I was small make the building look big from the outside. But every time I visit , the building shrinks, along with my grandmother's mind. My grandmother has Alzheimer's disease, and she lives in a nursing home.
My mother and I walk through the two doors that lead to the commons area and look around the room for my grandmother. No matter how many times I visit, it always seems like I'm seeing the rooms for the first time. On my right is a desk and a corridor of rooms. The bathrooms and three of the offices are on this side. There is a row of chairs along the north wall between the bathrooms and the office on that side, right beside a fish tank with two goldfish. Straight ahead is a small corridor that ends at the dining room. On the left side are two rows of chairs and an office, and two clean rooms with a corridor in between the chair rows. There are usually patients sitting in the chairs and the patients in wheelchairs are lined up in front of the desk.
We find my grandmother in front of the desk. We walk over to her and lean over to kiss her. She smiles a smile of recognition to us both; who she thinks we are, I don't know. After our brief greeting, I get behind her chair and push her to the dining room, and we take my grandmother to a table so we can sit and talk. The dining room is a large room with tables placed throughout so that the patients can eat together. Along the walls are semi-circular tables so a nurse can sit in the middle and feed patients who can no longer feed themselves. The kitchen is to the right with the door and the window always open. To the right of the kitchen is a small center with a sink, an ice machine, coffee machines, napkins and glasses. We sit at a table close to the middle of the room. While my mother is talking to my grandmother, I decide to walk around.
I walk down each of the corridors. As I walk by, I glance into each room with an open door. They are all decorated differently, each side a reflection of what the occupants are, or used to be. Some of the people are in their rooms. Usually, the ones in their rooms are moaning. These are the patients who sit and moan all the time. The nurses come check on them very often.
I go back to the dining room and sit beside my grandma. She and mother talk for a little while longer, then Mom says something about how we have a long way to drive and should be getting home. We then ask grandma where she wants to go, and we push her there. We go out to the car and head for home.
I am sad to think that this may be the last visit to the nursing home that we make, but yet I know that we will again drive up and meet my grandma for the very first time.

My sister wrote this in 1993 about my mother's mother. I don't know how long my sister knew Grandma before the effects of the Alzheimers worsened. Grandma was diagnosed just a few years after my sister was born in 1975. This piece was published in "Grasslands Anthology", issue #16 in 1993. It touched my heart. When I think of Grandma's house I think of the house in Flagler, Grandma's beautiful yard, their patio, sleeping upstairs with all of my cousins (Grandma coming up at least 3 times to tell us to be quiet and get to sleep), walking to the Stop n' Shop grocery store to get Grandma's groceries, walking to the pool to swim in the summer, walking to the town park to play (by ourselves!), riding bikes around town, really too many memories to list them all!
When I read this I realized that my sister probably did not have those same memories. I can't remember when Grandma went into the nursing home. I do remember that it was such a hard year. We had a stillborn child, my dad's mother had to go into an assisted care facility and Mom's mother had to go into the nursing home.
The thing I remember the most about Grandma's time in the nursing home was how she ALWAYS remembered who my Grandpa was. I went in with Grandpa several times and when she would see him, her whole countenance would light up and she would say, "Lee D., where have you been?" When anyone visited with her she would ask about Grandpa. I have seen others who forgot their spouses and it always amazed me that she remembered Grandpa.
When Grandpa died, we didn't know whether to tell her or not. We were told to tell her once and then just let it drop and if she asked about him just sort of change the subject. My mother, uncle and aunt went to the nursing home and told her. When they told her, she cried a little bit but she never asked about Grandpa again.
When the wedding vows talk about til death do us part (or however that goes), I think of Grandpa and Grandma and watching their love for each other.
Til next time...